In the meantime, the City of Phoenix is suggesting that during the project hikers visit other areas of the 200-miles worth of trails.

“We have about 41,000 acres here in the city of Phoenix to hike,” said Federico.

Fortunately for the parks department, a longer walk from the parking lot to the trail will not be enough to keep avid hikers from visiting.

“I’m still going to come, they’re not going to force me to not hike this mountain,” said Schreiber.

“It’s Arizona in the fall. No one gets discouraged from hiking,” said Jason Hutchison.

First-time Piestewa Peak visitors are being asked to enter the trails from Dreamy Draw Park and the 32nd Street Trailhead. City trailhead locations are also potential options for hikers while the construction is in progress. Even though none of the Piestewa trails will be closed over the next six months, electricity and cold drinking water may periodically be unavailable.

If you click on the “Access and Adaptive Management Plan” link in the gray construction message box, on pages 7-8 of the PDF you will see photos that show the existing configuration of those two lots and drawings of the improvements for the Summit and Navajo parking areas.

The interest in hiking throughout Arizona continues to grow as trail counter data found that a total of 3,457,707 people visited the city of Phoenix trails in 2017. The total was a 577,666 visitor increase from 2016.